How the woman faced the outlaw

For The Madera Tribune

The grave of Abby Minturn.

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The woman was alone in a strange land. She had been yanked from her beautiful, two-story home on Narragansett Bay and dragged to the desert in the San Joaquin Valley by her dreamer of a husband. Shortly after that, he had the audacity to just up and die, leaving her to face the wilds of the wilderness alone. 

That is just the beginning of a story I told at the Madera County Courthouse Museum in honor of Women’s History Month. 

As I was preparing for this presentation, I remembered a special tidbit of the tale that bears repeating here. It’s about how the woman met a notorious California outlaw and survived.